The present invention relates to a combination road planing - joint cutting attachment for hydraulic excavators, backhoe loaders, loading shovels and the like.
On almost every utility and road building site there is an excavator or backhoe loader or a loading shovel. Often these machines stand idle because they are not needed all the time on the site. Road builders usually have their excavators, backhoe loaders and/or loading shovels present when repairing pot-holes when, patching a road surface, when cutting joints on bridges, when making demarcations, and when milling joints on those spots where old and new layers meet (for instance, on crossings where one street gets a new layer and the crossing street does not; so that bumps can be avoided by vehicles driving over this joint). These jobs often require a known self-propelled road planer and/or road planer attachment. Also known are self-propelled joint cutters with diamond blades. Bringing all of these various machines to a work site can be strategically difficult and will involve a large capital investment. Even when a large number of machines are marshalled, the commercially available joint cutters and road planers often cannot work around commonly occurring obstructions.
Utility contractors with such equipment must often cut two joints in the road surface, then dig a trench, lay pipe, refill the trench, bring in the base course, mill on the edges of the joints 10-20 cm wide 2-3 cm deep in order to get a better connection between the old and the new layer, and then put in the wearing course. This, again, involves a myriad of expensive and often ineffective machines.
Cable contractors often cut two joints in foot-paths. Many foot-paths have only a thin wearing course of about 2 cm. Beneath this wearing course is a base course of 8-10 cm. It would be desirable to remove the base and wearing course with a planer. However, this is not possible with road planers which are on the market. Small road planers have insufficient power to perform this job. Bigger road planers cannot drive on foot-paths because there is not enough room or because they are too heavy and would damage the wearing course. In any event, after removing these courses a trenching device is often used where the asphalt has been removed to do the appropriate trenching.
Accordingly, there is a need to reduce the number of machines required at a work site with a powerful but lightweight accessory that can avoid obstructions and can reduce the number of passes needed to complete certain tasks.